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Brownielocks and The 3 Bears
Present

Today bread is made in all
countries, and with all kinds of grain and in all kinds of shapes. Some of
the old beliefs regarding bread are:

Because bread is created by
fermentation ( a lot like beer), our ancestors believed that this process was a
lot like the swelling of the female stomach when pregnant. This is how some
believe you get the bread is life
concept. In fact, Italian women used to stand in front of their ovens
which had loaves of bread in them and go through the motions of a mock birth
(contorting their faces, etc.) in hopes of assuring themselves a risen
loaf.

In the late 1800's it was
traditional to to force the older, unwed daughter (potential spinster?) to sit
on top of an oven while the bread bakes to make her more attractive to suitors.

But, the most renown fight
over bread was in France and focused on yeast, ancestry and patriotism.
Let's begin at the very beginning.

The French had some sexual
symbolism for bread baking. They said that the baker's oven was like a
woman's womb and the baguette was like a penis. Because of this, only
France's finest were involved in the act of bread consummation. So, ONLY devout
Catholics at this time were allowed to be bakers! One day a week, a French
baker, boulanger, had to go to confession before a priest. If he
didn't, it was believed that his sins would be passed on to others via the bread
he made. They also felt that baking itself was rather sexual and that the
yeast was a kind of representation of semen.

The French took their bread
so seriously that they practically ended up in a war over it. Why? Well, there
is this type of bun called the pain mollet. It's light and rich,
often with milk added in, soft and usually reserved to be eaten by the
aristocrats only. All others had to eat bread that was similar to bricks!

Then we have French
sourdough bread called, au levain, which is made by kneading, beating and
massaging a huge amount of dough into shape. It was felt that all this
effort helped to create better moral character to the bread, and to those who
ate the bread. Opposite of all this work is pain mollet, also
called "fantasy bread" because it's so easy it basically kneads
itself. Because of this, it was felt that eating this bread made you
lazy. Now, being lazy was all right for the aristocrats, but it was not
very good for the peasants. The last thing France needed was lazy workers!

Now, pain mollet
violated another custom. The historical method of starting a loaf of au
levain bread's yeast to grow was from some uncooked dough that was from
another loaf previously set aside for this purpose the night before. You add
this to the new batch but always left a little bit of dough for the next batch,
and so it went. This transferring of dough from one loaf to another
created a generation of bread, so that loaves in a sense had some sort of
pedigree that went back for generations!

The French loved their
ancestry. So, the problem with this new bread called pain mollet I
mentioned above is that it completely bypassed this need to get some dough from
a previous loaf in order to be made. The reason is pain mollet used
yeast created from Belgium beer to get it to rise. Oh Geez! This was
considered dirty, unnatural, foreign scum, etc. And, just like their
belief that bread that was made with hard work created hard-working people (when
you ate it), now the French felt that bread made from foreign yeast created
unpatriotic people! So, now they're thinking they're getting not only lazy
citizens but unpatriotic ones too!

Remember I said in the
beginning that they considered yeast like semen? Well, since this yeast came
from beer, that was not good because the French loved wine! So, the
controversy over pain mollet bread vs. au levain bread split
Paris in half. There were the Molletists vs. the
Anti-Molletists. In 1660 the Paris Faculty of Medicine banned
mollet. One year later this ban was overturned due to such
protesting. They said it was all right to make/eat mollet. But, to
compromise they banned "foreign yeasts." The controversy over
these two types of breads continued for over 150 years.

The Italians had divided
social classes between those that ate white bread called "Bread
Mouths" vs. those that ate dark bread called "Fodder
Mouths." Just like with the French, the aristocrats ate the white
bread only. The Roman elite would attack someone if they offered them a
slice of dark bread. Caesar even made it a law that stated that anyone who
served an aristocrat dark bread was to be punished with prison time.

In 1775, Philippe Cordelois,
a shoemaker, was arrested in his home by the King's men. He was
charged with "possession of a crouton of bread that was absolutely
brown" and taken to the interrogation building below the du Chatelet (today
a metro station). Why was this brown bread so bad evidence against him?

Just like the Italian
peasants, the French peasants also ate only coarse, dry and barely breads. It
was believed that the peasants were slightly above pigs in those days. While,
the aristocrats had very touchy digestive systems and could only deal with
eating the softest breads that were well-buttered. The only exception is
the French Army, which was allowed to eat white bread only after they revolted
when given rye.

When Napoleon Bonaparte
visited Paris, he was shocked to see the white bread vs. brown bread
controversy. This situation finally exploded when a baker in
Beaumont-sur-Otis attempted to charge white bread prices for rye bread. Oh
Gosh! The housewives tied up this baker and threw him into the pond. Then
they gave away all the baguettes in Beaumont. Then they went over to the next
town of Meru and gave away bread. Within 10 days, over 300 bread
riots broke out. The markets were raided. The bakers were forced to sell
their loaves at 1/10th the cost. And, ships were relieved of their
flour. This rioting finally reached Paris where the rioters gathered
outside the office of Mr. Anne-Robert Turgo, the Minister of Finance.

These rioters even
threatened to bombard the riot police squad with stale green
baguettes. These protestors complained that bizarrely colored
bread ranging from very dark brown to gray to green to black was now being sold
by bakers in Paris all because of Mr. Turgot's free-trade policies.

What did Mr. Turgot
do? He made up some farfetched story that the bread was being made
by sexual transvestites as propaganda tools against his government.
And, that these people had made the green bread weeks earlier. Mr. Turgot
had ordered the Paris police force to find anyone possessing bread that was bien
brune (quite brown) and bring these conspirators to justice. [Actual
transcripts of these confessions are in the French National Archives today.
]

Many of these documents
finger the shoemaker. With the most intense report stating that
Philippe Cordelois had been seen on the day of the riots with a subversive
baguette in his hands. This is why Philippe was charged with possession of
a brown baguette. Philippe claimed he was innocent and that someone just
gave him this bread. His story seemed to be valid and he was released after
several interrogations.

The treasonous baguette was
sent to the royal crime lab where the lab experts determined that it had really
been baked the same day as the riots (not days before) and the reason it was
green and black is due to its ingredients. And, it was later learnt that a
relative of King Louis XVI's, the Prince of Conti had been behind the
whole bread riot. Mr. Turgot was forced from power after banning the
bakery guild.

This whole thing was so
ridiculous that even Marie Antoinette came out with a statement. "If the
peasants were unhappy with their bread, why didn't they just eat
cake?" Ironically, in 1793, just a month after she said this, she was
beheaded and the National Assembly voted to create a National Bread of
Equality.

Once the revolution got into
full force, political correctness took over. Suddenly, white was
out. Proletariat brown was in. Political groups protested against
the class separation caused by la mollesse (luxury white breads) and
urged that it be banned to create some uniformity. Court records of this
time show who some bakers were arrested for politically incorrect baking.

This new Bread of Equality
was declared to be made of 3 parts wheat, and one part rye. Suddenly, the
people's daily bread now being used to help create a democratic nation. This
utopian loaf law was passed on November 15, 1793. But, it never got
ratified. Why?

Six weeks later the French
Parliament came up with what they felt was a much better solution. They now
ordered that every able-bodied Frenchman now grow potatoes!